According to a recent Pew Study, for the first time there are more Millenials than Baby Boomers. Generation X lags but not by as much as you’d think making up 27% of the total vs 30% for Boomers.

Given that roughly 1/3 of the population is confronting aging (I can see Julia Child saying, “You must confront the duck!”) it makes sense to hack it. Matthias Hollwich (with Bruce Mau Design) at 40 years old saw old age coming and didn’t like it so he tasked all of his resources to study how to make it better. The result is this book: New Aging: Live Smarter Now to Live Better Forever.

New Aging is a list in chapter form of probably 100s of ideas that turn the challenges that aging presents into opportunities. Hollwich divides the actions into 9 chapters:

• Love Aging
• Be Social
• Never Retire
• Stay Fit
• You are How You Eat
• Access vs Mobility
• Our Homes are Our Castles
• Add Services and Conveniences
• Pass it On

I found some of the ideas in Add Services to be the most interesting. For example, share one person or share help as a group. You may not be able to afford or need a person on your own, but could use help the equivalent of one day a week. Sharing a person with 6 other friends would allow you to stay in touch with them and get help with some of the most demanding tasks on a regular basis.

Another empowering example that I like is to created a shared calendar of volunteer needs.  For example, if I was caring for someone, I could create a calendar of needs for them. The whole family and friends would then know what’s needed and could volunteer to pitch in when it works for them.

In the Access vs Mobility section, using Uber and Lyft and embracing the self-driving car when it arrives are all ways to stay mobile and remove the burden and risk of driving.

Most of the ideas are immediately actionable and worth picking up.